[lit-ideas] Re: The Final Finger of Fate
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 12:20:31 -0400
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Geary
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 9/15/2006 11:56:41 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Final Finger of Fate
AA:
> Most of fate is very much in our hands.
M.G. If fate is defined as the inexorable operation of ineluctable laws, then
fate can't be in our hands whatsoever.
A.A. What laws? Fate is the luck of the draw. Death is everyone's fate.
Maybe that's what you mean by law?
M.G. If you're standing in the path of an oncoming bullet, then the most loving
parents in the world can't influence that.
A.A. Well, yeah, they can by preventing the need for gangs and wars. Can they
stop an earthquake? That's luck.
M.G. I have no idea to what degree determinism 'determines' our lives.
A.A. Luck, how well we're nurtured and how well our genes hold up.
M.G. You apparently give it a high priority otherwise you'd not proselytize for
'good parenting' as the panacea for war and crime and human misery in general.
A.A. Correct.
M.G. You cause and effect seems strictly binding to me. But if determinism
does rule the day as you seem to suggest, then you're just pissing in the wind
with your 'good parenting' advocacy, because those who abuse their children
must be fated to do so. By the same token, so would you be fated to proselytize
as you do. So I guess you can't help it. Too much good parenting can be a
tiresome thing.
A.A. Too much good parenting has never been tried, so how would you know?
M.G. But maybe we're not determined. Perhaps we are agents acting variously
freely in the world. Are we?
A.A. If we're free agents, then we're evil. Thrown out of Grace, etc.
M.G. I dunno, as JL might say. And what does it matter, after all? We don't
have any choice but to live our lives as though we are creatures of free will.
A.A. Then we're evil. Or lying to ourselves.
Decisions must be made, choices chosen -- whether those decisions are
pre-ordained by our history and genetic make-up and those damn butterflies in
Brazil, we'll never know, because there is no way to ever know. And besides,
who cares?
A.A. Obviously nobody. They'll fight tooth and nail for the status quo, not
to change a thing except to make it worse.
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